Plenty Of High-seas Drama Took Place On The Riverboats

OPINION - SEMINOLE'S PAST

November 29, 1998|By Jim Robison of The Sentinel Staff

Shipwrecks in Florida bring to mind hurricanes sinking Spanish fleets and lost gold and salty tales of pirates and buried treasure.

But, there's a freshwater version of these tales with plenty of shipwrecks. Steven D. Singer's second edition of Shipwrecks of Florida includes the wrecks of 73 ships on the St. Johns River between Jacksonville and Sanford. Most were steamboats.

Shallow-draft, side- and stern-wheel steamboats could be found on nearly ever river of Florida. But the north-flowing St. Johns attracted the largest concentration of steamboats.

From the mid-1800s and well into the early 1900s, the St. Johns River was often the best - if not the only - way for travelers to reach the interior of historic Orange County, which once took in just about all the modern counties of Central Florida.

Working-class steamboats played a major role in hauling troops and military supplies during the Seminole wars. Cannon fire from the steamer Santee drove back Seminoles during an attack in early 1837 that gave Mellonville its name. (Capt. Charles Mellon died during the raid.)

Steamboat travel on the St. Johns and its many lakes and rivers opened the interior to winter tourists and new settlers. And it was steamboat commerce that made Mellonville the center of trade for all of interior Central Florida.

Mellonville, as one newspaper writer put it in the 1850s, was ``where civilization stopped.'' The steamboat docks were alive with activity. The big double- and even triple-decker steamers with huge side wheels were favored by the wealthy Northerners who could afford to escape to Florida during the harsh winters back home. The lighter, flat-bottomed stern wheelers were built compact with a shallow drafts for the sharp curves and narrow channels of the St. Johns tributaries such as the Econ and the Wekiva.

The size didn't matter. These were floating fire hazards, made of wood and powered by boilers fueled with coal or timber. Many fires were caused by exploding boilers. And, many times, the captain, crew or passengers died in the fires.

The twisting turns of the river did not help. Neither did the competition between steamer captains to prove they commanded the fastest ship. Damaged, abandoned steamboats were a part of the riverfront view for decades.

An 1888 newspaper described the Wekiva River as a ``narrow, tortuous and shallow stream'' filled with brush and debris. Steamboat historian Edward A. Mueller writes that getting boats around the sharp bends often required skillful pilots to chart a zigzag course. They would run the bow and then the stern into the riverbanks before steaming ahead. Other times, skippers sent crews ashore to tie a rope to riverfront trees to help guide the steamer. Many of the steamers ran aground, leaving the crew and passengers stranded.

One of Longwood's first settlers, John Neill Searcy, arrived on the steamship Starlight at the docks of Mellonville in the spring of 1873 when dozens of steamers carried tourists and homesteaders.

The 261-ton sidewheeler's main port was in Jacksonville, where it picked up travelers arriving from ocean voyages along the East Coast. The Starlight had been built in Portland, Maine, in 1866. It burned to the waterline at the wharf at Sanford on May 11, 1878, (or possibly 1879). Its passengers and crew escaped injury. But the fire resulted in a total loss of the ship and its cargo.

The 145-ton steamer named the City of Sanford was loaded with vegetables and palmetto buds when it burned in the spring of 1882 on its journey from Palatka to Jacksonville. Nine people died aboard. It had been built just two years earlier.

Another steamer of the same name, this one owned by the St. Johns River Line, sank in Lake Monroe at the foot of the dock. The manager of the line recruited Sanford youngsters to try to save the cargo of flour, sugar, canned goods and cases of cigarettes. The ship settled on the bottom of the shallow lake. The boys swam out to it, climbed aboard and tossed the cargo to others on the dock. As a reward, the manager allowed the boys to keep a few packs of soggy smokes.

Schedules were often missed. And breakdowns were common.

Mueller describes one excursion in his 1986 book, St. Johns River Steamboats. The Queen of the St. Johns and the Chesapeake were lashed together side by side and linked by gangways on the upper decks. Passengers didn't know that both ships were known for constant mechanical troubles. By roping them together, the captains stood a better chance of making their ``double-breasted'' voyage a success.

Many captains and steamlines salvaged the wreckage of one ship for the next. The hulls, boilers and other parts that could be saved often were reassembled for a new ship, particularly during the Civil War.